Too Concerned About Clean?

My girl friend, Loretta swears that the reason why my children were so sickly as youngsters is that I kept my house too clean and the kids did not have an immunity to germs that were out in the "real" world, just outside the door to the sterile environment that I had created.
I had to chuckle this week when I finally got around to reading some of the magazines that I buy for a "rainy day" but never get around to looking at them. An article caught my eye in Mother Earth News about a renegade farmer, hauled off and procescuted for selling raw milk off of his farm. I had to agree with the writer, today's mentality about dirt, germs and protecting kids from everything will be the cause of extinction of humans at some point.
I don't think that my cleaning fettish has anything to do with being a germaphobe, I just like things neat and orderly and clean. My kids dug their own carrots out of the garden and wolfed them down with grubby little hands, they drank raw milk all of the time, I made angel food cakes with cracked eggs (God forbid!), they played in the milk barn while we were milking and only got kicked a time or two and I know that Andrew used to drink out of the dog dish before he could reach the hydrant and turn it on by himself. They had Beaver Fever from playing in pond water, they got wormed on a regular basis (like any farm kid should, whose favorite place to play with the John Deere tractors is the manure pile!) and I am sure that the boys had a bug eating contest once or twice. It didn't kill them. But I am not so sure that the lethal amounts of hand sanitizer that is flowing around here, would have made them healthier.
This past week, all toys, magazines and newspapers have been removed from all of the offices in Pincher Creek. Hair salons, dentist's offices, coffee shops - no one escaped the purge. Computer keyboards have to be cleaned between users at the library etc. etc.
If Loretta's theory is correct and we have an H1N1 outbreak in town, then we are all going down. We will be so immune suppressed from the cleaning products and removal of all germs in our environment, we won't stand a chance. One thing is for sure, the farm kids will survive - they are virtual pig pens of germs and they are very happy about it! Just ask any kid playing in a shit pile!